instinctive craving of the human heart for justice; man's own tremendous verdict on his sin[149]. But the universality, or at least extreme generality of the belief in a continued existence, is quite distinct from the particular pictures of it which the imagination has variously drawn; much as the universality of conscience is distinct from its varying content among diverse races and in different ages. And the broad fact remains that from the dawn of history the majority of mankind have believed in and looked with confidence to a future life to rectify, and therefore justify, the inequalities of earthly suffering; however much their views have varied as to what should constitute rectification. Secondly, there is an instinctive tendency in all religions, from the savage upwards, to view pain, whether in the form of asceticism or sacrifice, as inseparably connected with an acceptable service of the gods or God. The asceticism of poor Caliban foregoing his little mess of whelks, and that of the Hindoo whose meritorious sufferings are expected to prevail, by intrinsic right with heaven; the hideous holocausts of Mexico, and the paper substitutes for offerings of the parsimonious or hypocritical Chinee are widely different things. But they all spring from a common instinct, variously distorted, yet persistent through all distortions, and progressively refined, till it culminates in the Hebrew substitution of the broken heart for the blood of bulls and of goats. It is the custom of some modern writers to represent the higher forms of sacrifice as merely survivals of the savage desire to propitiate the gods by food. But this is not an adequate analysis even of the savage creed. Naturally enough the primitive hunter, to whom food is the chief good, may think food the worthiest offering to the gods. But it is not simply food, but his own food, that he offers, the choicest morsel, that which it costs him something to forego. In other words, the root of sacrifice is self-sacrifice, however crudely it may be expressed. Of course, the primitive hypocrite would seek to evade personal suffering as naturally as the civilized hypocrite will give alms at another man's expense. But sincerity must come before hypocrisy, and the sacrificial instinct is in origin sincere. Its first account of itself may be irrational, and its earlier manifestations often blundering and repulsive; and if it were now only a survival, the same should be true of its later forms, for survivals are not commonly improved in the process of surviving. But so far from this being the case, it has been refined by successive developments and is as integral an element of later as of earlier religions, being in fact the symbolic statement that a more or less painful self-surrender is the necessary condition of all human approach to the divine. Natural religion then, in the widest use of the term, carries us on beyond common sense, in